Doctor Who_ The Scarlet Empress Part 10

'Shut up, h.e.l.l hear you!'

'Not him. He's in love. What were you going to ask, Sam?'

'Why do you look so annoyed every time Iris tells us about the things she's gotten up to in the past?' His face went dark. 'You're not the only one allowed to get up to bizarre adventures, you know.'

'I know.'

'And another thing.You can't say she's interfering where she oughtn't to be, because -'

'I know,' he hissed. 'Look, I'll tell you later.'

'When she was telling us all about being involved with saving the Federation envoys trapped on Peladon you had a face like thunder last night.'

'Because,' he said gently,'because she's lying, Sam.'

'I'm not stupid. I'm a.s.suming she's exaggerating a little bit. But -'

"Those things happened to me. She's stealing things that happened to me.'

With that, he went off back to the bus, and they all pitched in to cover the final, back-breaking few metres of their task. The Doctor even followed Gila's lead and took off his s.h.i.+rt, which startled Sam. The sun gleamed on his white back. His hair hung down in wet tangles.

Eventually, eventually, they made it.

The bus rested at the top of the rise.

They yelled for joy, and hugged each other.

'This is all you ask of me,' said the djinn.

'Thank you,' said the Doctor, wiping sweat out of his eyes.

'Thank you, Doctor,' said the kabikaj solemnly.'You have given me the mind of -'

At this point Iris jumped out of her seat in the cab of the bus, caught her handbag strap on the handbrake, yanked it, and set the bus into unstoppable, terrible backward motion.

The others flew out of its path just in time.

Then they turned, horrified, to see it finish up where they had begun.

It was midnight by the time they pushed it back. The kabikaj was persuaded to help them once more. It seemed bemused by their doings, as if they were simply amusing themselves.

For several hours no one spoke to Iris. Even the Doctor was too furious to trust himself to speak. They put their anger into the effort of getting the bus back to the top.

When they were finished Iris came to join them.

'What a day!' she laughed, and received a cold look from each in turn.

There was a whisper behind them, a flurry of sand, and they turned to see the kabikaj streak off into the night, clutching his prize jewel.

'I don't know about you,' said Gila.'but any kind of djinn gives me the creeps.'

'He was very good to us,' said the Doctor. He eyed Iris beadily. A very valuable, helpful addition to the team.'

Iris flushed. 'Put your clothes on, Doctor,' she said. 'You're standing around virtually naked.'

This time he blushed.

Iris tried to make amends by searching around in her emergency food stores and laying on the most lavish meal of their journey so far. She brought course after course out from the bus, bearing them all on silver platters. The others were staggered, impressed and far more grateful than they felt she deserved. She served them roast duck and a whole series of piquant fruit sauces. Sam was content with the vegetables, which came glazed in honey, sprinkled with fresh rosemary and parsley.

Impossible things accompanied her from her TARDIS kitchen. A giant meringue carved into an elegant, frosted swan. The four of them nibbled on a piece of its elegant neck each and considered the noises of the night around them.

'This side of the mountains,' said Gila,'is quite different to the other, the one we are used to. It is a much more dangerous place.'

'Great; muttered Sam.

'There's a village nearby,' said Iris. 'I thought we might head towards it tomorrow. Get supplies, get word of the Forest of Kestheven. Look out the best route.'

The Doctor shrugged. "That sounds sensible.' He was looking forward to seeing some new people.

"The people here -' began Gila warningly.

'Gila,' Sam interrupted. 'Don't bother telling us. We'll find out for ourselves, all right?'

Not for the first time that day, Gila looked stung.

Chapter Eleven.

I'm Entirely Credulous

Many years ago the town of Fortalice had given up on the idea of progress. The people there were a law unto themselves. They had decided that since they were a mere isolated community on the mountain slopes, they were accountable to no one and need never pay heed to the rest of the world. This community could decide for itself the way in which it would live.

When the people of Fortalice realised this, that nothing held them back from doing precisely what they desired, theirs was a curious sense of freedom. No tyrants or monarchs shackled them. No laws to speak of.

All that held them back, they felt, was a sham idea of progress.

A few individuals started to ask some awkward questions.

Why do things have to change? Who said so? If greater wisdom, fort.i.tude, and brutality were the things that really enabled people to live better lives, then so be it. The Fortaliceans were all in favour of enjoying their lives. But as far as they could see, or rather, as far as their various thinkers could see, there was very little to be gained by being clever, stronger or more ruthless than anyone else.

They had everything they needed. They had all the s.p.a.ce they could want. Their technology was of sufficient quality to extract their requisite moisture from the earth and air. Their crops were regular and untainted.

Their single library contained precisely one thousand and one volumes, which was the aggregate of all the knowledge they would ever require.

Satisfied with themselves and what they knew, the Fortaliceans drew in their reins and happily lowered their horizons. The rest of this world was a dirty, dangerous place anyway, and they had no pressing wish to investigate further.

Generations grew, and grew satisfied that they knew all there was to know about their own world. Everyone learned the same things and that was enough. They weren't a nosy or inquisitive race and this, they felt, saved them from the roving insecurities and dissatisfactions of everyone else. The Fortaliceans believed in their seasons, their ritual festivities, the consoling regularity of the sky's diurnal round. When unlucky visitors from less enlightened races happened to stagger into their oasis of calm, how unhappy these outsiders seemed. They were always choked with a myriad unfulfillable desires for knowledge and conquest and love.

Effectively, what the Fortaliceans had done was to conquer their own appet.i.tes, and they reckoned that it was just as well.

Generally, those hapless wayfaring visitors were put out of their miseries. Their appet.i.tes were mercifully quashed by the Executioner, a man who lived alone in the town and, although he was not their leader, he decreed who would be burned, hanged, quartered and generally slaughtered. These tasks fell to him by default, he being the only individual suited to these grisly tasks. His personality was fitted for and therefore given over to the removal of unwanted persons. In the tight human economy of Fortalice, the Executioner had his circ.u.mscribed place, as did everybody else.

This afternoon the Executioner was in his element. It was their summer solstice. This was the afternoon of the Grand Fracas, which took place at this appointed time every year.

He sat back in his tower and watched the townspeople rally around and organise their various factions, preparing to come out drunkenly into the streets and get on with the ritual. A terrible, ominous air of carnival hung over the town. Grimly, the Executioner antic.i.p.ated his busman's holiday.

Time in Fortalice was circular. No year any different from the last. The special days came and went and no one thought they would ever change. There were days to long for and days to dread, but there was no escaping any of them.

Naturally it was to this town that Iris's dusty, worn-out bus brought her party, in search of rest and nourishment, just as the Grand Fracas was about to break out.

The first thing they did was split up. The Doctor's idea. Gila was to search out provisions with Sam, Iris was to go talking to townspeople to find out what word-of-mouth warnings, oracular wisdoms and local dangers they might expect to encounter, and the Doctor was to head for the library in the town square where they had parked. He was going in search of proper, accurate maps.

'This splitting-up lark,' said Iris as they stood beside the bus.'Don't you think you should have learned your lesson by now?'

He was staring into the sky. It looked dark and heavy. The air was full of static cling. There was a storm approaching.'What do you mean?"

'Oh, come off it, Doctor. Splitting up has never done you much good in the past. It means you end up running around after each other once whatever disaster to befall everyone has... befallen. It's how all of these affairs get out of hand. There's safety in numbers.'

He grew exasperated.'And everything takes four times as long. No, my plan's best.'

'You just enjoy having to come and rescue everyone.'

'Don't be ridiculous.'

'Splitting up indeed,' muttered Iris mutinously.

'How do you know, anyway?' he snapped.'How do you know how I operate?'

'I've seen enough.'

As they drifted off on their planned individual missions, Sam reflected that Iris was actually right. It was only when they were apart that the Doctor and his companions had the worst stuff happen to them. Not for the first time she wondered if he actively courted danger. He liked to tempt chaos out from the shadows.

'We've not got much of the local currency,' said Gila.'And I doubt they take it here, anyway.'

He and Sam went looking for a marketplace.'Beg, borrow or steal,' said Sam.'That's always the contingency plan.'

'You're very resourceful.'

'Don't patronise me.'

'I wouldn't dream of it.' He was laughing at her. Let him. She still didn't trust him an inch.

The Doctor went into the library carrying a book of his own. As he hurried up the dusty steps to the sun-faded portico he worried vaguely that some fussy librarian might decide that he had stolen the AJa'tb from those very shelves and forcibly confiscate it. On the long nights of this journey the Doctor had found this mysterious book oddly consoling and he wouldn't want to be parted from it. It was a ludicrous, preposterously knocked-together anthology of improbable adventures and he liked it a lot. Its leather cover was smooth under his fingers as he hugged it protectively to him. He remembered the story inThe Arabian Nights about the pages of writing that were impregnated with poison. Maybe this archaic text was drugging him each time he read from it, and traced the words with his eyes and fingertips.

The library windows were dark. Perhaps it was shut or abandoned. The stone sign that used to read LIBRARY above the pillars was decipherable enough to denote the building's function, but the letters were chipped and effaced. Only the T stood out with any clarity.

He stepped inside the building's merciful chill and here, apparently waiting for him, he found the first resident of Fortalice that any of his party had yet encountered.

He was a thin man, with skin stretched taut over bone and eyes that stared unblinking from across the marble counter as the Doctor strolled in. The librarian's hands, his dry, white, twiggy ringers, tapped a rapid tune on the uncluttered desk. To the Doctor, the man looked as if he didn't get out much.

They said their good mornings and the still, cavernous interior of the building gathered up their words. There was no other sound here - a relief to the Doctor, after his several rather noisy days.

'I'm new here,' the Doctor began.

'I know,' said the librarian. He was in a spotless black suit with a high collar. He hardly seemed to breathe.

'Am I that conspicuous?'

'I know all of the residents of Fortalice,' said the librarian. "They all come here.You are not a resident.You were not educated here.'

"That's quite true, but I'm willing to make up for lost time.'

'Are you?'

'Yes, you see, I tend to move around rather a lot in my line of work, and I like to keep up with local culture, history, customs... and maps.'

'We have everything here.'

'Everything?'

'Everything that there is to be known in Fortalice. There is nothing else.'

For the first time the librarian became almost personable. 'All one thousand and one books are kept here,' he said with pride.

'That many, eh? You see, what I'm interested in, primarily, is -'

'Your interests are of no consequence here, I'm afraid,' said the thin man.'You have asked for the knowledge of our town and I will give it.

Beginning with Book One, the First Book of the Self, and then we may progress from there.'

The Doctor frowned.'Are you proposing to give me a reading list?'

"The only reading list,' said the librarian sharply.'Surely you don't want to start anywhere other than the beginning?'